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Rimsha Asher
Miss Pasche
AP Language and Composition
October 18
th
, 2013

Author Ralph Ellison, in the engaging introduction to Invisible Man,
gives insight to whom his narrator is. Ellison is persuading his readers to
believe that his narrator is not invisible, as the people around him
believe. He adopts a sympathetic tone to disclose his narrators feelings
of hopelessness towards the inconspicuousness he tolerates.

One of Ellisons most effective methods of signifying the invisibility
yet entity of his narrator is his utilization of a comparison to argue that
he is not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe nor a
spiritual manifestation (Ellison 1). By using this comparison, he
convinces his readers that the narrator exists as a person of his own with
real, human emotions and the desire to be accepted. He also addresses
the identity of his narrator through picturesque diction by illustrating he
is a man of substance, flesh and bone, fiber and liquids... and
possesses a mind (Ellison 1). He chooses this expression because by
emphasizing words that create an image of living beings, flesh and bone,
he makes the point that his narrator is not irrelevant, but just as human
as the rest of us. Furthermore, he maintains a first-person perspective by
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repeatedly emphasizing I am to describe the narrator in order to give
the readers a better understanding of him as well as to make the writing
more personal (Ellison 1). This profuse support of the narrators being
appeals to the audiences logic; it indicates that he is a human, too.

Next, Ellison shifts to identifying his narrators feelings on how
people perceive him. He denotes his invisibleness with the simile Like
the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as
though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass
(Ellison 1). He describes the narrator as someone who is not in the
limelight, but someone who is submerged into a realm of ambiguous
disorientation, casted away to the sidelines. He implements this
comparison in order to acknowledge the narrators feelings of
hopelessness. The narrator has lost faith in the people around him to
discern him and treat him like the human he yearns to become. He does
not want to feel alone and lost, and is desperate to find himself, to feel
accepted; by conveying this bitter, morose tone, he evokes pity from the
audience.

All in all, Ellison effectively achieves his goal for us to sympathize
with his narrator by vindicating his desire to integrate into his society.



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Works Cited:


Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1952. Print.